I was watching the show The Penguin and I got to the part where a single mother who was working tirelessly to raise her three sons lost two of them. Two teenage sons.
It was sad to see, the feeling was after all the suffering and hardwork it took to raise them. Working jobs trying to make ends meet, only to spend it all on food for the children, school fees, health, etc. all for the children.
Then it hit me!
Centuries ago it wasn't this costly to raise a child. Think about life before the Industrial Revolution, what did it cost to raise a child?
Food
Men farmed, hunted, fished. Water to fish in, land to farm in, forests to hunt from were usually not a problem.
Apart from that there were usually many fruit trees just lying around and a passerby can easily get fruits for free from random trees around.
When was the last time you got free fruits in this era?
Usually once a child starts walking and talking he's left to play around with friends and while they play the child can eat several fruits, catch rabbits, fish, get some farm produce from friends around (because almost every friend had a family farm), at the end of the day you didn't even give the child more than one square meal.
So you mostly spent next to nothing feeding them. Today before the day ends bread winners have to give three square meals to their children, costly meals in most cases.
Bills
No one paid phone bills, water bills, electricity bills, cable, data, etc. These things didn't exist.
Nobody had to buy all the costly things we now have in our houses like ACs, TVs, refrigerators, fans, etc.
No one spent this much on tuition, etc.
Clothing and Shelter
Land was easy to access, there were only a handful of people in the world. Your house was mostly built by your brothers and friends around or if you needed more sophistication you paid some experts. Not my, for sure.
Clothes were mostly basic and most mums made clothes for the family.
The Theory Proper
All of this is to put in perspective how cheap it was to raise a child. And, this was why human life had so little value in the past compared to today.
In fact it was when the cost of raising a child started rising that the value of human life started rising.
When did more people start thinking slavery should end? When did people start clamouring for better pay? When did corporal punishment start to become unwanted?
It was with the industrial revolution. Because the industrial revolution produced more things to buy, things like ACs, TVs, refrigerators, cars, and other technological inventions. Things your family now needed.
It was around this time education started becoming more important and costly.
Clothing, land, food, etc started becoming costlier.
All these costs made raising children costlier and with that our value for human life increased.
The End
[cover photo created by me]
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